Sunday, June 21, 2009

Basil Infused Olive Oil Ice Cream

Olives were the base of recent dessert. The dessert was comprised of basil infused olive oil ice cream, a Mediterranean olive tuile and a variety of fruits. Once again I came up with a variety of plating options for the final product.

The ideas for both recipes came from Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernadin in New York City. While making the items I changed the recipes several times to modify the end product. Usually I follow recipes pretty tight but these two were great base recipes that allowed for personal interpretation.

The olive oil ice cream was good but if I make it again I’ll reduce the amount of fromage Blanc to make the frozen product a little more malleable.

The ice cream had two main flavors, olive oil and basil. The recipe called for two hundred grams of olive oil, which could overpower the basil flavor if the extra virgin olive oil has a strong flavor, which mine did. So I decided to only use sixty five grams of olive oil. This is one reason why it’s always a good idea to taste your recipe before dumping an ingredient completely in.

The olive tuile turned out perfectly in the end. I used kalamata olives in the tuile giving it a darker color. To get the tuile to turn thinner and somewhat transparent, I had to add three times the amount of glucose syrup that it called for in the original recipe.

For the final plating I formed a few of the tuile’s into miniature “taco shells” and “cannoli’s”. Then I diced up some strawberries and mango to put in the “tacos”. To finish the plate off I put a blueberry leaf on the plate.

Ambition

Hi, my name is Dylan, I’m 16 years old and love food. I eat out all over the country in the search of the perfect meal but haven’t found it yet. There are many great restaurants in the world and it’s my job to eat at them. I shoot all of my own photos with a Nikon D60 and a Nikon 60 mm micro lense. I also work as an Pantry cook at Houlihan's.